Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
The perky blonde protagonist in the television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” is just a normal girl dealing with ordinary teen issues like boyfriend troubles – when she’s not saving the world from werewolves, vampires and other demons.
The cult favorite TV series was created as a “stereotype buster,” and is a good way to explain feminist ethics to a pop-culture savvy population, Jessica Miller, assistant professor of philosophy at UMaine, said during a Women in the Curriculum and Women Studies lecture on Tuesday at Memorial Union.
“Like most superheroes, she has a lot of skills and powers. She can jump really high, for example,” Miller said. “In many ways, she’s like male superheroes. She’s very strong. She’s very intelligent. But she’s a woman.”
Miller, an assistant professor of philosophy, wrote an essay on “Buffy and Feminist Ethics.” It will be published in the next volume of the Popular Culture and Philosophy series published by Open Court Books of Chicago, the current best-selling philosophy series. Subjects of past volumes include the TV series “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons,” as well as the film “The Matrix.”
At least 50 people listened to the presentation, a good-sized crowd for the lunchtime lecture series. Miller began with a disclaimer in deference to all the Buffy fans in attendance.
“I’m not a vampire expert,” she said. “I’m not even a Buffy expert, although I’ve seen all the episodes at least once and some twice.”
Miller is something of an expert in the relatively new field of feminist ethics, a branch of philosophy that asks “normal ethical questions but with a focus on gender,” she said. “In other words, does gender have anything to do with morality?”
Miller has found Buffy to be fertile ground for exploring answers to this question. She posits that when Buffy isn’t busy killing demons, she has moral and ethical dilemmas just like the rest of us. But her ethical code differs from that of, say, Superman, because Buffy is a female.
“A lot of Buffy episodes deal with these issues of morality, only on a metaphorical level,” Miller said.
Carol Gilligan’s book, “In a Different Voice,” inaugurated this branch of philosophy, according to Miller. Gilligan’s position claims that there are two perspectives to moral life – the justice perspective and the care perspective. People who approach moral issues from the care perspective “are concerned with avoiding harm and hurt, and view themselves as essentially embedded in relationships, and as essentially involved with other people,” Miller said. This perspective is viewed as being typically female, and in fact one-third of women use the care perspective when making moral decisions, according to Gilligan’s research.
Buffy is a good example of the care perspective in action.
Buffy calls upon her moral conscience often in her role as a slayer. Within the Buffy lexicon, slayers are born to save humanity from the demons that constantly bubble up through hell mouths. Slayers excel in physical skills and are intelligent and cunning. They have another tradition: they’re not team players.
“We have no friends. Just the kill. We are alone,” said Kendra, another slayer, to Buffy.
But Buffy doesn’t work this way: her friends and family are key to her sense of self, Miller said. When Kendra tells her that emotions are a weakness, Buffy replies by saying, “My emotions give me power. They’re total assets. Power alone isn’t enough.”
Miller described how Kendra takes the justice perspective and is strictly by-the-book. Buffy’s feminist perspective allows her to use all of her emotions, from anger to passion, to lead to new moral solutions.
Buffy consistently defies the show’s authority figures, insisting that her team of friends is an integral component of her ability to protect the earth. This bending of the rules for the greater good lets Buffy create a new definition of herself as an autonomous individual, another key point of feminist ethics, according to Miller.
Miller believes that the show “is very unique in terms of showing a young woman without a male authority figure,” although she is still “the classic blonde Hollywood babe in appearance … and operates as a traditional sexualized female.” She said that Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, wanted his show to change culture from within, by exploding stereotypes, while working in a popular genre. “If I made “Buffy the Lesbian Separatist,” a series of lectures on PBS on why there should be feminism, no one would be coming to the party, and it would be boring,” Whedon has said.
According to Miller, Whedon succeeded.
“Buffy is a really sexual girl, but she is also a powerful one,” Miller said.
Miller said Buffy uses her powers to do good. She agreed that Buffy may be an unusual role model for feminist ethics, but she is a convincing one.
Bangor Daily News